Boston College Tapes: PSNI try to get all project material

Gerry Adams was arrested and questioned for four days over the murder of Jean McConville

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The PSNI are to try and get all the Boston Tapes, they announced tonight.

The force’s Serious Crime Branch said they “have initiated steps to obtain all the material from Boston College as part of the Belfast project”.

The move, which is sure to spark a political storm, comes in the wake of the controversial arrest of Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams over the murder of Jean McConville.

Boston Tapes already obtained after a lengthy trans-Atlantic legal battle were used as part of detectives’ attempts to build a case against the Sinn Fein President.

He was released after being interrogated for four days and a file sent to lawyers at the Public Prosecution Service to decide if there is a case to answer.

Mr Adams has always denied any involvement in the mother-of-10’s abduction in 1972, murder and disappearance.

His arrest lead to barrage of criticism from Sinn Fein and accusations of a “dark side” and a “cabal” within the PSNI driving an anti-peace process agenda.

Jean McConville with three of her children before she vanished in 1972

The Boston material handed over last year only accounted for a small portion of the entire archive and had to be specifically linked to that incident.

It is unclear how the PSNI will mount any legal bid, if a court case is required, to get the rest of the tapes.

Legal sources said tonight they may argue that the tapes are interviews with former paramilitaries talking about their activities in illegal organisations so will be filled with potential information about criminality.

Dozens of former paramilitaries, both loyalist and republican, gave accounts of their involvement in the Troubles on the understanding their interviews would not be made public until after their deaths.

But that assurance was undermined when a US judge ordered that audio tapes that referenced Mrs McConville be handed over to detectives from the PSNI.

The police said it was now going to pursue the rest of the collection.

A PSNI spokeswoman said: “Detectives in Serious Crime Branch have initiated steps to obtain all the material from Boston College as part of the Belfast project. This is in line with PSNI’s statutory duty to investigate fully all matters of serious crime, including murder.”

Gerry Adams has claimed most of the evidence detectives presented to him in Antrim police station about Mrs McConville’s death was based on allegations levelled by project interviewees, two of whom were the now deceased former IRA members Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price.

Amid uncertainty about the status of the tapes still held in the archive, Boston College had offered to return the material to those individuals who have given interviews.

Some of the interviewees have threatened to sue the college over its handling of the issue.

Journalist and published author Ed Moloney worked on the archive with former IRA member turned writer and academic Anthony McIntyre. They were effectively sub-contracted by the college to undertake an initiative it agreed to fund and store.

Both have subsequently criticised the college, claiming it did not robustly challenge the initial PSNI court bid - allegations the college has rejected.